


Lather, Rinse, Repeat

by Froggimus_Rex



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Brainwashing, Child Abuse, F/F, Gen, Mostly Gen, Pre-Canon, Some kissing, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Froggimus_Rex/pseuds/Froggimus_Rex
Summary: The first time Adora ran away it was an accidentSeven first times Adora ran away from the Horde.
Relationships: Adora & Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76
Collections: Iddy Iddy Bang Bang! 2020





	Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The first time Adora ran away it was an accident.

After all, it would've been hard to deliberately run away when as far as she was aware the universe encompassed only a handful of rooms, and those rooms were inhabited by a grand total of three. She remembered, in a vague sort of way that grew vaguer and fainter with each passing day, that this hadn't always been the case. That these vague, unpleasant memories contained an absence in Catra's place, filled with an aching loneliness only intermittently soothed by Shadow Weaver's presence.

That there might have been a world beyond these walls hadn't even crossed her mind until the day the door malfunctioned. 

Had Shadow Weaver been present at the time, the main takeaway of the sudden expansion of Adora's universe would've merely been the knowledge that an alluringly forbidden outside existed. As it was, there was nothing to curb childish curiosity and two sets of deceptively quick and sturdy toddler legs.

Still, there was a chance this adventure might have ended without incident had they been more cautious in their explorations, but caution was another concept that Adora had yet to understand, so she paid more attention to the maze of corridors in front of her, exciting and new, than to the twists and turns left behind them. Eventually though, their forward progress was stymied by too many closed doors, and when they tried to go back, excitement having given way to hunger and frustration, heading in the direction that felt right only led them to yet more closed doors. Exhausted, they curled up next to each other in the nearest nook, fingers clasped tight to clothes and fur, Catra's tail looped around them both.

The next thing Adora became aware of was something gripping painfully tight around her ankle, pulling her away from Catra, up into the air. A voice she didn't recognise spoke, the words almost familiar, but she didn't quite understand them, only that something about them made her feel almost as bad as her upside-down, flip-flopping stomach did. More voices laughed, and her stomach twisted into even more knots, then Catra hissed and she was falling, hitting the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of her. 

The laughter had stopped, but then a much more terrible noise started up, an ear-splitting yowl of fear and pain. Adora twisted around to see a group of faceless people, impossibly huge. The closest of them held Catra up by the tail, not caring that it was _clearly_ hurting her. Adora didn't have a name for what she felt then, but it had her lunging across for the hand that dangled just barely within her reach, biting down on gloved fingers as hard as she could.

Everything went white as there was a crack that left her ears ringing. A moment later, pain bloomed along one side of her face. The faceless figure, holding the hand she'd bitten instead of Catra's tail, took one step forward, then another, then started backing up as a familiar darkness started creeping along the walls. Sobbing, Catra's hand in hers, she scrambled backwards until they were enveloped by the safety of Shadow Weaver's robes. She was still crying when Shadow Weaver's hand brushed softly over her cheek and that inky darkness dissolved into an even deeper black.

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora ran away she thought she was solving a problem. 

Since the incident in the Black Garnet chamber, she hadn't been able to sleep through a whole rest period. She hadn't really noticed at first, she'd always been a restless sleeper, and being shuffled in with the other cadets hadn't helped that, especially once Catra had taken a dislike to Lonnie.

But it wasn't just that, now she was plagued by night terrors, dark dreams where instead of relenting when she placed herself between Catra and Shadow Weaver, Shadow Weaver just ignored her, where she wasn't able to move or speak while Shadow Weaver... She always woke before the end, either curled tightly around Catra or the one being curled around, Catra's sleepy purring and steady heartbeat calming her own. Then she'd woken up and Catra hadn't been there.

Instead of steadying, her heart had started racing until she thought it was going to burst, she hadn't been able to breathe, by the time Catra had returned from the latrine, she'd been convinced she was going to die, and she would've deserved it too, for not being good enough to keep Shadow Weaver from changing her mind. 

After that, the dreams had gotten worse, and the lack of sleep slowly but surely started catching up to her. 

It might have been obvious sooner, if they were doing the sort of training the older cadets did, but they only did basic drills, mostly so they could get used to working as a team, and Adora was determined not to give Shadow Weaver any excuse to get upset with Catra, so she worked hard to compensate for slowed reflexes, or clumsiness, or inability to focus, and it was easy enough to hide it at first, but even if the sergeant didn't pick up on a missed cue, or wayward blow, Adora did, running them over in her mind again and again as she failed to fall into her fitful nightmare ridden sleep. Which only left her even more tired in the mornings. 

Eventually something had to give, and when Adora finally couldn't keep it up anymore, she'd messed up big time, enough that the sergeant had taken one look at her and sent her back to barracks to get some sleep. Even Kyle had never had that happen.

When she'd woken up from yet another nightmare, this time utterly alone, the thought came to her with a sickening clarity. She was the problem, things would be better if she just wasn't there anymore. She hadn't really thought about it after that, finding a scrap of paper and leaving a scribbled apology to Catra on their bunk, and just going, sneaking out of the ship and picking a direction at random. It was only hours later, after she'd made it out of the city and into the surrounding desert that she realised her mistake. By then it was already too late.

They hadn't had any survival training yet, not that they were supposed to even leave the ship at all, let alone the city, so Adora didn't know what made a desert a desert. Didn't know about the blinding heat, the arid air that sucked every scrap of moisture out of a body, the lack of water, especially _clean_ water, to deal with either, the mirages that tricked the unwary. By the time she began to understand exactly what waited ahead, even if she'd wanted to return she couldn't have said which way back was. There was nothing left but to keep placing one foot in front of the other.

Night brought relief from the heat if nothing else, and a desire to rest, but somehow she knew that if she stopped she wouldn't be able to start again, and as appealing as that sounded, something else, a tugging in her gut, a voice she couldn't quite hear, kept her going. 

"Kid?" She didn't even realise she was on the ground, trying to pull herself forward by her fingertips, until someone picked her up. "C'mon, kid. Don't be dead, you little shit." That didn't make sense, the gruff voice sounded like it was coming through a guard's helmet, but the guards were heavy fists and harsh tempers to make a dangerous game of dodging, not huge, cool hands lifting her into a skiff with surprising gentleness.

"Adora? What's wrong? Why isn't she moving? Is she dead? Don't be dead!" The way the guard let Catra's frantic babble wash over them instead of silencing her with the harsh crack of skin on skin didn't make sense either, not that Adora minded, not when those wonderfully cool, gentle hands were pressing a wet cloth to her skin, even if she did pinch her arm first.

"She's got a death wish but she's not dead yet, barely. Make yourself useful, brat, and take over while I drive back to base. See if you can get her to drink that-" Adora found herself choking on thick salty-sweet liquid. "-if she wakes up enough."

Apart from snatches of the guard loudly asking why this happened on her shift, and repeatedly telling Catra "not so close, you're a living space heater, you dumb fuck", the next thing Adora knew she was in the infirmary, every inch of her skin covered in gel, Catra clinging to her hand so hard her claws were digging in, Shadow Weaver and the guard standing by the door, Shadow Weaver radiating fury as the guard spoke to her. She caught words like 'menace', 'other teams', 'search quadrant', but what drew her attention was the way the guard almost seemed scared. She hadn't realised that even other adults were afraid of Shadow Weaver. 

Shadow Weaver drifted over to the bed, placing her hands on Catra's shoulders, Adora struggled to apologise, but nothing came out but a near soundless croak. A bank of lights next to the bed turned from green to red, but Shadow Weaver ignored them. "I've just been informed about the excellent way Catra handled herself today." There was something off, almost forced about Shadow Weaver's words, but Catra drew herself up at the praise, all smiles, and it wasn't like Adora could say anything about it anyway. "We'll discuss that later. As for you, Adora..." Then Shadow Weaver's hand was cold on her forehead, her eyelids grew heavy, and Adora knew nothing more than the chill and the dark.

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora ran away she just wanted some space to clear her head.

And maybe she wanted to prove a point.

Maybe not a very good one, but she was too mad to really care about that. Not so mad she didn't flich some survival gear from requisitions before sneaking out, but mad enough to actually do that in the first place.

Mad enough and too caught up in her own thoughts to really notice just how far and how she'd gone until she passed away under the shadow of a rocky outcrop, the moon low enough in the sky to fling it far across the sand.

It wasn't like she was lost. She mightn't have been paying _quite_ enough attention to her surroundings, but she'd stomped her way along a more or less straight line, and when she looked back she could see the haze above the Fright Zone clearly even if the shape of the rocks and dunes obscured her view. She just wasn't going to be able to get back before night fell, or, more importantly, before curfew. Which suited her just fine, actually. If she could find somewhere to hole up until the moons rose there'd be enough light to navigate by, and it'd be easier to sneak back in towards morning anyway. The only thing that might go wrong was Shadow Weaver deciding she needed surprise training, and Catra could worry about that for once.

Which wasn't a particularly fair thing to think. Especially when she didn't actually want Catra to get in trouble with Shadow Weaver, she never wanted that, but Catra hadn't been very fair either, and _she_ hadn't been the one to start a fight, hadn't been the one who decided to be mean, and while she didn't mind, exactly, that it felt like she was always one trying to make things up between them, today she didn't want to. At least not right away.

There was a cave near the base of the outcrop. Not too big, but not too cramped either, with no signs of habitation on the sandy floor. In other words, the perfect place to be alone with her thoughts. Not that she really wanted to be, they weren't really all that great company right now. She'd walked off a lot of her anger, but underneath that she was miserable, and she was still mad enough to feel a petulant little stab of hope that Catra was just as miserable right now, only she didn't because she didn't want Catra to be unhappy at all, not least because Catra being upset was half the reason she'd been so mean in the first place.

With a frustrated groan, she pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead on them. It wasn't fair. She'd never even asked for those stupid lessons in the first place. Here, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she could admit that she hated them, actually. The initial thrill of extra training just for the two of them, away from their team, the chance to learn something without Catra and Lonnie being at each other's throats, wearing thin as she started to realise there dozens of hidden and confusing rules for something as simple as talking, then began double- and triple-guessing every word she spoke in case she said the wrong thing until she was barely able to make herself talk at all. 

Except to Catra, who took to the classes as easily as breathing. Which wasn't actually that much of a surprise, considering how often her mouth had gotten them into, and occasionally out of, trouble, but she just seemed to effortlessly understand everything that left Adora confused and terrified of failure. Something about them just made her happy. So Adora did her best to endure the lessons, let Catra tease her when she asked her to explain everything all over again after them.The worst part, though not the actual worst part, was that it had been working, she'd started feeling more confident, her words coming more easily again. Right up until Shadow Weaver had decided to check on their progress and under her gaze she hadn't been able to say one single word, her tongue lying in her mouth like a lump of useless flesh.

And that was that. No more lessons.

The worst, the actual worst part, had been after Shadow Weaver left, after she'd finished letting Adora know just how she'd disappointed her, Catra had blamed her too. Not for being so slow and stupid that simple speech was beyond her, that would've been fair. She'd acted like Adora had _wanted_ Shadow Weaver to stop the lessons just because Catra was better at them, and when she'd tried to protest, it'd gotten worse.

She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. She didn't have enough water spare to cry right now, so she lay on her side and tried not to think.

Something landed on her, and without realising she'd ever fallen asleep she woke up. 

"Wake up! Adora! Wake up!" Mid-way through bracing herself to throw them off, she realised it was Catra, shaking her shoulders, and frantically talking at her. "I didn't mean it."

Adora knew it was the closest she'd get to an apology, but she still wasn't quite ready to accept it and tried to finish shoving Catra off her, which only really succeeded in getting her to stop with the shaking. "You sure sounded like you did."

"Only because I didn't think you'd actually leave!" And Catra sounded so upset about it that Adora just sighed.

"I was gonna come back," she said, lying back against the ground in annoyance, since clearly Catra wasn't getting off her any time soon. "I didn't even mean to come this far."

"Well, you shouldn't have!" Catra leaned down, pinning Adora's wrists. Which she would've been even more annoyed by if she hadn't realised she could know see right down Catra's top, and wow. Just, wow. "You said you wouldn't."

Adora had never said anything of the kind, but she was far too distracted by the view to do much more than respond to the distress in Catra's voice with an automatic "I'm sorry." Which was even more annoying than the pinning because she didn't even have anything to apologise for.

Catra was glaring at her now, their faces close enough that Adora could make out the fine details of her fur, the chapped skin on her lips that had split where her fangs had worried it. "Are you even paying attention?"

"Yeah," she replied, then lunged upwards to kiss her, tasting the salt on her skin for a few glorious seconds before Catra pulled back.

"Stop trying to distract me!"

"I wasn't!" Though now she thought about it, kissing was probably a pretty good one. She should remember that. "I just wanted to, you know."

Catra leaned back. "Oh." She sounded surprised, but the good kind, and Adora didn't feel that bad about taking advantage of that to flip them over. See how Catra liked being pinned.

"Now I'm distracting you," she declared as she bent down to kiss her again. They had plenty of time to get back.

Later, they were almost successful at sneaking back in, making it all the way back to their empty barracks without getting caught, only to turn around and find Shadow Weaver in the doorway, silent and disapproving.

"Boy, that was a _great_ run, Catra." She knew it was a terrible lie. Catra's expression made it clear just how terrible a lie it was, and Shadow Weaver's silence only grew more ominous. "We should really get going before we miss breakfast."

"Leave us, Catra." It was like a storm breaking, all the tension leaving the air as the skies opened. This was going to be bad, but not as bad as it could be, since she'd sent Catra away.

"Shadow Weaver, I'm sorry we got back late." She was pretty sure this one came out more believably, since she was sorry, if they'd been a bit quicker then they wouldn't have gotten caught.

"Adora, why do you keep lying for her?" And just like that, all that tension was back again.

Adora knew she was on dangerous ground, Shadow Weaver pretending to be reasonable instead of angry was always a trap that she was never good enough to avoid. "I don't know what you mean."

"Adora, I _know_ neither of you were in your bunks last night." Adora backed up as Shadow Weaver loomed over her, not at all relieved that the anger had slipped through. "I know you were outside the Fright Zone. What I don't know is why you keep trying to protect Catra from the consequences of her bad ideas."

Adora's shoulders hit the metal of the bunk frame, and before she could stop herself she said "It was my bad idea. Why are you _always_ blaming Catra?"

Shadow Weaver didn't respond, and Adora didn't know if it was because she was too shocked at her outburst, or too angry. She tried to keep herself from continuing, from making it worse, but it was like something inside of her had burst and she couldn't hold it back. "You're always punishing her for things that aren't her fault, or that aren't even that bad. You'll even punish her for doing well in a class. It's like you're trying to find reasons to get mad at her!"

She didn't even know why she'd said that last one, it didn't even make sense for someone to do something that, but it felt right in a way Adora didn't like at all.

Shadow Weaver didn't seem to like it either, because she finally reacted, reaching out and gripping Adora's chin painfully hard. "If only you were so impassioned a speaker yesterday," she said, tilting her face up. "It seems I have a bigger mistake to fix than I thought."

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora ran away she was acting on pure panicked instinct.

It was also a lot closer to actual, literal running than was all that smart. A mad, blind dash through the desert, heedless of anything except Catra's hand in hers, the weight of the pack on her shoulders, sand beneath her bare feet, step after burning step.

It wasn't a sustainable pace. Wouldn't have been even if she was wearing her boots, and eventually they fetched up in a small cave at the base of a looming rocky outcrop, relatively clean and cosy. She was vaguely aware of Catra tugging the pack off her shoulders, rummaging through it, but she couldn't stop staring at her hands, the rust coloured stains under her nails, her fingers trembling too much to even attempt cleaning them. A light touch at her shoulder had her sitting heavily, like her legs had been knocked out from under her, and Catra crouched beside her feet, bandages in her hand.

"You shouldn't be doing that." She could see how stiffly Catra held herself, favouring her left side, as she started wrapping Adora's feet, her touch light and quick.

Catra ignored her, tying off the first bandage. "You're not going to be able to keep walking if I don't, since you didn't grab your boots."

She knew she should have, but at the time, they'd seemed like the least important thing she could reach for. "You shouldn't," she argued, trying and failing to pull her other foot away from Catra, who lightly snagged her claws in the ankle to keep it still. "Not after what I did." She looked down at her hands again, the dried blood and bruised knuckles staring back at her like an accusation.

"To Shadow Weaver?" Catra stood, and Adora could see her trying to hide a wince as she straightened up. "That was _awesome_ , I only wish we could have seen her face."

Adora's hands stung as they involuntarily clenched into fists and she tried not to think of meaty thuds, the crack of bone against metal, a sickening haze of anger overlaying everything. "That's not what I-"

She was interrupted by a hand thrust in front of her face. "C'mon, get up, we need to get going again."

She swallowed down her need to talk about this and took Catra's hand as she pushed herself back to her feet. The sand was still rough against her toes and heels as they headed out again, but it _was_ easier to walk with them wrapped. 

Not that it mattered, in the end.

The first, and only, sign something was wrong was Catra's hand silently slipping out of hers as she fell to the ground in a dead faint. As Adora bent to check on her, the ground rushed up to meet her with dizzying speed, and that was all she knew.

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora ran away it was Catra's idea. 

She'd been acting weird for a while now, asking a bunch of questions she barely even understood, getting mad when Adora didn't know the answers, madder when Adora tried asking some of her own, so she wasn't _that_ surprised when Catra woke her in the middle of their sleep shift and passed her a backpack. Deeply confused about _why_ Catra had decided they were doing this, there was rule-breaking and there was rule-breaking, but she trusted Catra, so she followed her without question. Mostly without question. But Catra wasn't really answering any of the ones she did ask, or her answers didn't make any sense so it was kind of the same as without question.

"Where are we going?" They'd taken shelter from the midday heat in a sandy floored cave just about big enough for both of them, Adora sipping from the hydration pouch Catra had shoved into her hands before she could open her own pack for one. That much at least was normal. No matter how much she slacked off in, or just didn't turn up for, the rest of their classes Catra was always front and centre for survival, attentive and engaged, which would be great if she didn't also act like Adora hadn't been right there next to her. Like between them, they hadn't set a half dozen training records together. Bad enough when Shadow Weaver did the same thing in the opposite direction.

Catra shrugged. "Not sure," she said, which trust or no, did not fill Adora with confidence, but she concentrated on her pouch rather than say anything. "But it's always this way, so there has to be something there. Eventually."

Whatever Catra thought they were going to find, eventually, they didn't, because Shadow Weaver caught up with them, darkness roiling around them out of the night like a cloud covering the moons. Adora expected Shadow Weaver to be mad, the kind that always had her waking in cold sweats after, and she was, hadn't even given Adora a chance to take the blame before she'd trapped her body and stilled her tongue with magic, crackling red lightning dancing over her limbs, but she also seemed amused as she circled Catra, which somehow terrified Adora even more than her anger did. "Oh, Catra, Catra, Catra, when did you figure it out?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." She was lying. Adora could tell, which meant Shadow Weaver probably could too, and as if she'd guessed that, Catra added "Even if I did, why would I tell you?"

Shadow Weaver laughed, a hateful mocking sound that Adora tried to cringe away from even though she couldn't. "I am trying to credit you with something resembling wit, child." Catra's ears flattened as Shadow Weaver stroked a hand through her hair. "You won't like the results if I have to guess."

"You think I care about what you do to me?" And there were days when Adora felt like she truly didn't, not as much as Adora cared.

Shadow Weaver drifted over to Adora, stroking her cheek, and for a moment she was glad of the magic freezing her in place, that she didn't have to keep herself from flinching back from the touch. "Catra, do you really want to find out how far back I can go?" There was a threat there that Adora didn't understand, wasn't sure she wanted to, but Catra obviously did because her bravado fled in an instant.

"Three weeks, maybe four," she said, so quickly she stumbled over the words, eyes wide as they followed the movement of Shadow Weaver's hand down Adora's cheek. "But I didn't tell her. I won't. You don't need to-"

Shadow Weaver didn't so much move back to Catra's side as she flowed. "Hush, child," she crooned. From someone else that might have been soothing. But not Shadow Weaver, never her. "No need to fret. I'll make sure of that."

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora ran away she'd meant to go back.

That was the truth. She'd only intended to be gone a little while, just long enough to find that sword again, then she'd go back to Catra, to the Fright Zone, and then...she didn't know, just that the sword felt important. 

And at first it seemed like that was exactly going to happen. Despite the way they'd fought and yanked at the tiller the first time, it was incredibly easy to find where they'd entered the woods again, she hadn't even needed to check the navicomp of the skiff she'd borrowed, and it was borrowing because she was going to take it back. Navigating through the trees was also nowhere near as hard as she thought it was going to be, even though it was only the second time in her life she'd been in an unsimulated forest. It was almost, and this couldn't have been the case, but it wasn't like she had a map to check either way, like she was walking in a straight line. Or at least as straight a line as she could given the various vines and thickets. 

But then she'd found the sword again, and more besides.

Even after she'd met Bow and Glimmer, after she'd _changed_ , she'd still meant to go back. Maybe not quite as quickly as she'd first planned, or as willingly as it became harder and harder to convince herself that they were lying or even mistaken about the Horde. But she'd still meant to go back, for Catra, if nothing else, with questions she knew Shadow Weaver wouldn't bother to answer.

She'd meant to go back right up until Catra made it clear she couldn't.

  


* * *

  


The first time Adora chose to run away from the Horde, it technically wasn't a retreat. Technically.

Retreats had always counted as failures in their drills, better failures than a rout, maybe, but still failures, with the harsh, cutting criticisms and expectation that she account for herself after that always followed a failure. The only thing that counted as a success was a success. No matter what it took. No matter how you felt after.

And technically, the mission had been a success. They'd achieved their aim, rescued Bow and Glimmer, retrieved the sword, that was a success, and a success was a success, no matter what it took, no matter how you felt.

And as she sat in the not full enough skiff, it didn't feel like a success. Not just because of Entrapa's absence, or how the remaining princesses were falling apart before her eyes while she couldn't find the words to stop them. Though either of those things would've been enough on their own.

But they weren't on their own. It wasn't just the hollowness in her gut of guilt, shameful and familiar, or the constriction in her throat and chest she was starting to associate with grief, that she was feeling. 

There were numb spots on her face, four on each side, where Shadow Weaver's fingers had pressed into her skin, their edges starting to tingle with returning sensation. Her teeth _ached_ like they were too big for her mouth, parched and tasting of copper, ozone, and bile. Her muscles felt like they'd been worked to exhaustion, twitching and trembling with a thousand tiny spasms. And wrapping its way around her spine was a slow, cold horror, because _none_ of these were unfamiliar.

They'd never been this strong or fresh before, or at least she didn't remember them being like this, and that just had that chill growing colder, but she did remember waking up late in her bunk, throat raw, exhausted despite the hour. She remembered Catra's face hovering above hers, the badly hidden worry that melted into teasing when she complained about Catra letting her oversleep.

She'd always assumed that it was normal to just wake up sick sometimes, the same way it was normal to never really be satisfied after meals, and no one else talked about it because you just didn't talk about it. Even after coming to Bright Moon where they did talk about things like that, it hadn't happened, so she hadn't borrowed trouble and risked reminding people where she'd come from by bringing it up when she didn't need to. Which should have been her first clue that it wasn't normal, and deep down she'd known that.

She just hadn't realised how not normal it was. Worse than that, she was pretty sure that Catra had.


End file.
